


detrimentum

by WriterGirl128



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Keith (Voltron) Angst, Keith (Voltron) Whump, Keithtober 2019, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 09:23:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20992487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WriterGirl128/pseuds/WriterGirl128
Summary: Keith was nowhere to be seen, and the sword was extended, and it wasextinguished. The strange purple light that normally shone through the insignia, through the detailed cuts of the blade, had gone cold, and nothing was right.





	detrimentum

Lance picked up the blade, his heart hammering in the base of his throat.

This wasn’t right. 

This wasn’t _right_. 

The blade—not a knife, he noted numbly, as his finger traced along the space-black metal—was cold to the touch. It was extended, long and tapered at the end, a familiar sword that would forever be a bit awe-inspiring, a bit isolating. Striking in a way that normally made his heart rate spike, normally made the hot thrum of adrenaline pulse through his veins, just under his skin, because seeing this sword usually indicated a _fight_. 

Maybe it was masochistic, the longing for some kind of action, for something to make his muscles burn and his heart race and his mind clear of anything besides a bone-deep need to _survive_—but now, the sight of it just made him sick. Because while it may be the blade’s true form, it wasn’t its resting form. Lance had never known the blade to be extended like this, into a sword, without the hilt gripped tightly in Keith’s fist.

Still, he’d recognize this sword anywhere.

And Keith was nowhere to be seen. 

Keith was nowhere to be seen, and the sword was extended, and it was _extinguished_. The strange purple light that normally shone through the insignia, through the detailed cuts of the blade, had gone cold, and nothing was right. 

Beside him, Pidge brought a hand to her mouth as she, too, realized what they were looking at. “_No,” _she exhaled, wide eyes wavering behind her glasses. 

Then Hunk was flanking him on his other side, and Shiro behind him, and Allura took up the spot by Pidge, all looking down at the object Lance held. It was too heavy, suddenly, for his fingers to grasp. It fell to the cave floor with a clatter. He pulled his hands back as if burned, his stomach turning over.

No one made a move to retrieve it. By his shoulder, someone took in a ragged breath. “Krolia said—” Hunk’s voice began, unsteady, and faltered. Lance could hear him swallow, as if trying to suppress the quiver, but could still practically hear his oldest friend trembling. “She said a Marmora agent’s blade is tied to their life force. The light in their blades, it, it _reflects…_”

Dread, heavy and insistent, sat on Lance’s chest. As if they needed the reminder. 

He couldn’t drag his gaze away from the fallen sword. It looked like a relic, lying there. A token of something ancient and powerful and ultimately futile. 

There was another shaky exhale, from his other side, and Shiro stepped forward. “No,” he denied quietly, and while there was a waver to it, there was also an adamancy. For a moment, Lance wondered who he was trying to convince. “No, he can’t be. We’d know. Black would know, you’d be able to feel it through the bond.”

And—yeah, Shiro had a point. Lance grasped at the theory like a lifeline. They were bonded, through Voltron and the Lions. They meld their minds together on a regular basis. They’d feel it if anything happened—they’d have to. 

“We didn’t feel it when you died.”

Shiro froze at the words, blinking at Pidge like she had just delivered a sucker-punch to his gut, breath hitching.

Pidge’s shoulders climbed to her ears as she curled into herself, eyebrows drawn as she scowled unseeingly at the cave floor, where the lifeless sword still laid. “We didn’t feel it,” she repeated herself, quiet and airy and so unlike Pidge’s usual self-assurance that it twisted something deep in Lance’s chest. “When you died. We didn’t… feel anything.”

She sounded so young. She _was _so young. She was only sixteen.

“It’s different,” Shiro managed, after a moment, and shook his head. “I didn’t—”

“You were _dead_,” Pidge cut him off, suddenly all edges and sharp corners, eyes flicking to him fiercely despite the shine they held. “Your body was gone—disintegrated, or something—without a trace, and your soul was drawn to another plane of existence. You were _dead_, Shiro, and the Lions didn’t tell us a damned thing.”

Shiro’s posture wavered, his resolve crumbling before their very eyes, and he said nothing.

And—there went _that _scrap of reassurance. 

Lance’s heart was hammering, and his eyes stung as he wrung his hands together. “Shiro?” he asked, hoarse, and charcoal eyes shifted to him slowly. “Do you think—Black wouldn’t have…” 

Shiro seemed hollowed. “I don’t think so.”

It was a long shot, anyways. It seemed like a hard-enough feat to rescue one fallen paladin within her quintessence—to rescue a second would’ve been something of a miracle. And though Lance had grown up in a fairly religious household, even _he _had learned there was no such thing. Not in war. Not in _this _war, especially—not in Zarkon’s war, based in pride and greed and _anger. _Not even Black had enough power to combat it alone.

His eyes burned. There had to be something. “Well Black would—Black would know if something was wrong, right? Even if she didn’t tell the other Lions, even if she couldn’t save his quintessence, _she’d_ know_. _So we can just ask her. Right? You can ask her?”

Shiro shook his head, fists tightening at his sides, mechanical and flesh alike. “I—no, I. I can’t.”

Lance grit his teeth, eyes burning and angry. “What do you mean, you _can’t?”_

“I mean I _can’t_.” Shiro’s voice was brittle. “I lost my connection to the Black Lion when Allura—when she pulled me out. Put me in this body. Any kind of spiritual bond I’d had with Voltron, or with Black, has been gone for months_._”

Lance swallowed back the panic rising in his throat, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes to stem the insistent tears gathering. “Then what—” he broke off, letting his arms fall uselessly to his sides, “then what are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to find him?”

“Find him?” Pidge parroted, rough. “He’s—he’s _gone._”

“No,” Lance refused, “no_. _He’s not. He can’t be.”

Pidge wiped at her cheek with the heel of her hand. “Lance, he—” her voice choked off. “—the _blade—”_

“Screw the blade,” Lance grit back, sharp, “he’s not _gone, _damn it! _He can’t be_.”

He can’t be.

He can’t be.

He can’t.

They would find him. Whatever it took, they would find him.

********

They found Keith.

It was a rush of fury and terror and adrenaline, and Lance couldn’t recount the winded tale if he tried, but they found him. Roughly three months, fourteen days, and seventeen hours later, they _found him. _Alive.

In the dim torchlight of the Galran dungeon, Keith looked like a shadow, reanimated. He was sickly gaunt, thin, with pronounced hollows in his cheeks and neck that made Lance’s breath catch in his throat. The rags he wore—so reminiscent of the slavewear they’d found Shiro in so, so long ago—hung loosely around his frame, exposing sharp collarbones and knobby elbows.

The breathing flames grew and shrunk and grew again, molding obscure shapes along the lines of his throat, his too-pronounced cheekbones, the sharpened angle of his chin. There was blood crusted down the curve of his eyebrow, down the line of his jaw, a rusty trail starting somewhere hidden by matted, snarled hair. His lower lip was split, bloodied and fat, and angry bruises lined his jaw.

Even in the low light, handprints painted his throat in shades of blacks and blues_, _beneath a much more gruesome ring of red, and something in Lance’s mind leapt erratically to _shock collar. _The blistered skin looked raw and swollen, and when he glanced at Keith’s wrists, he found similar blistered rings encircling them. Cuffs, or shackles of some sort, most certainly.

One eye was nearly swollen shut, but the gaze that found Lance’s gaze was sharp, attentive, with slit irises and yellowed sclera. Distinctly Galra, something Lance had only seen before in moments of intense adrenaline, or anger, or pain.

But he was undoubtedly _alive, _and at the moment, that was all that mattered.

Lance nearly choked as he inhaled. _“Keith.”_

Aside from the terrible, dark bruising and the horrific sores, he didn’t seem to be injured anywhere. Didn’t seem to have any broken bones, though if the way he favored his right side was any indication, he might have some bruised ribs. Whatever had made his head bleed probably gave him a concussion, and he was certainly emaciated, but a few weeks with Hunk and a quick trip to the cryopods would probably have him right as rain in no time.

Physically, at least.

Lance swallowed a sob, the rest of the team stunned into silence behind him. “Keith, I’m—I’m so glad you’re okay,” he choked out, wanting to rush towards him, but his feet wouldn’t move. His feet wouldn’t move and Keith was _alive _and all he wanted was to feel it for himself. Feel the pulse under his skin, feel the raspy pull of his breath, feel the life in this man he’d thought to be dead, over and over and over again. But his feet were frozen in place. He swallowed, throat dry. “We found your Blade, but it’s. The light’s out, and we thought—we, we thought that—” The words clogged in his throat.

_We thought you were gone. _

_We thought we lost you. _

A flash of something took over Keith’s bruised face for a split second, something twisted in grief, before he dropped his eyes.

“Krolia’s dead,” he rasped, then, the hollowest inflection Lance had ever heard.

Pidge brought a hand to her mouth, and Allura let out a soft, horrified “_No”._

The coarseness of Keith’s voice didn’t help, and Lance couldn’t help but think it was either a marker of time passing completely mute, or time passing in agony. There was no _middle ground_—it was the product of silence, or of screaming, and nothing else. His eyes flicked to Keith’s throat, bile rising in the back of his mouth when he realized how likely it was that the wounds there would scar.

Lance wasn’t sure his brain could even process what Keith had said, before the man in question limped closer, holding out a skeletal, shaking hand. “Do you have it?” he asked, still hollow, cracked and hoarse and bare. “Her Blade?”

Numbly, Lance reached for his belt, drawing the weapon free. Of course he had it. He hadn’t let it out of his sight since they’d retrieved it. Always waiting, hoping, _praying _to see some flicker of life in its cold depths. “Keith, I don’t—”

But Keith just took the darkened Blade into his hand, expressionless as he turned it over between his fingers. Gritting sharpened teeth, he gripped it by the hilt and ran his thumb over the lifeless sigil—

—and then the Blade was changing. Elongating further, narrower than it had been with more reach to it, almost a cross between his bayard configuration and a sleeker katana. The cut of the Blade was stretched, sharp angles narrowing down the length, and then the light within surged back to life. Glowing so brightly so suddenly that it left starbursts dancing in Lance’s eyes.

By the time it cleared enough for his vision to return, Keith was already stalking unevenly down the length of the tunnel, a longer, deadlier-looking sword gripped in his quivering fist and illuminating the walls in a faint, familiar purple glow.

“Wait, hold on,” Lance tried to call, panicked and heartbroken and terrified at once, “Keith! You’re _hurt, _you need to rest—”

“I’ll rest when Haggar’s dead,” Keith growled, and Lance never would’ve believed the voice to be originating from such an emptied-looking shell if he hadn’t heard it, if it hadn’t sounded so distinctly like _Keith _that it couldn’t have been anything but.

He started after him, suddenly able to move again. “Keith—”

The weathered paladin whirled on him, teeth bared. “She is_ gone,”_ he snarled, all fury and fire and _pain, _wild eyes glinting in the half-dark and teeth sharp as knives_. _“My mother is _gone_. I just got her back and now she’s _dead._” His gaze flicked from Lance’s to somewhere over his shoulder and back. The other paladins, probably—or Shiro, at the very least. He swallowed. Took a ragged breath in, and blew it out. “No more. I’m ending this. _Now_.” His gaze cut back to Lance, with his hand outstretched and frozen mid-stride, and his lips once again pulled back, exposing his teeth. A clear threat, or at the very least, a means of defense. A instinct-driven means of saying _“And if you stand in my way, I’ll end you, too.”_

Despite it all, Lance wasn’t afraid. Because Keith was cracking, and it might apex in some fiery, white-hot explosion, but Keith looked like he hadn’t seen a kind face or been touched by a kind hand since his capture, and there was no way in _hell_ that Lance would punish Keith for that.

He swallowed, his chest lurching for the other. He wanted to reach out and draw him close, wanted to warm his clammy skin and ease his grieving soul, but there were some hurts that couldn’t be soothed, and this fit the bill to a tee.

“Keith.” Shiro’s voice, from somewhere close behind Lance, was ragged. When he stepped closer to stand behind Lance, hand outstretched towards his best friend, his _brother, _Lance could see the ache in his eyes.

Not for the first time, Shiro seemed much older than he was. A man tormented by war and haunted with trauma, whose seen far more pain than any twenty-seven-year-old ought to. He’s been where Keith is. He’s been captured, and tortured, and held prisoner. He knew how cruel the Galra could be.

“Come on, kiddo,” he urged, sad and gentle. “Let’s get you home, get you in a pod. You’re in no shape to be fighting anyone, right now.”

Keith flinched, drawing away and in on himself. “I’m fine.”

Shiro let his arm drop, as patient and good as ever. “You’re not.”

“I’m _fine, _Takashi.”

“Keith.”

Keith growled at him and took a step as if to push him away, but swayed on his feet, and used a hand to prop himself up on the wall instead. “’M _fine_.” And then he took in a shuddering breath, choppy and ragged as the ocean during a storm, and squeezed his eyes shut. “’m fine,” he repeated, almost to himself, and his jaw tightened. “I’m _fine._”

Lance glanced to Shiro, cobras coiling around his heart and _squeezing squeezing squeezing, _until he was sure it would stop beating altogether. But Shiro only had eyes for Keith, approaching slowly, like you would a wounded, terrified animal. “_Otouto,_” he murmured, soft and warm, and a sob ripped from Keith’s raw throat.

“—_fi-ine,_” he was still mumbling, even as his expression twisted and the tears escaped his swollen eyes, breathing jagged and sharp. “I’m fine, I’m fine, ‘m _fine—_”

The sword clattered to the floor. Keith braced his forehead on the wall, hunching his shoulders low and curling his arms around himself. He shook his head, still repeating the words. Chest heaving, shoulders shaking, sharp sobs cutting through the air like broken glass. His head scraped along the rough clay as he lowered himself down, down, fatigued and spent.

“_I’m fine,_” he sobbed, anything but. “_I’m fine, I’m fine.”_

Shiro was at his side in an instant, gathering him close as Keith shook apart at the seams. Drained of all the anger, drained of the fight, drained of his fire. Withered and beaten and orphaned again, he buried his face in Shiro’s chest and _wept._

The heat behind Lance’s own eyes came to a front, and he sucked in a sharp, uneven breath. He wiped at his cheeks with the heel of his hand, as Shiro glanced up at him from the dirty dungeon floor. There was so much sadness in his red-rimmed eyes, but no tears—not yet. Not while Keith needed him to be strong, and Lance would always envy Shiro’s ability to keep himself together when others were falling apart.

“Send a message to Coran,” he murmured, quiet as he pressed his cheek to Keith’s hair. Keith just curled in closer, hiccupping sobs growing sharper, more erratic. “Ask him to get a pod ready. Let’s bring him home.”

Lance swallowed a sob of his own, nodding dutifully. Thanking the stars that they’d found him. That Keith wouldn’t be alone with his grief any longer.

Quickly, he sent the message to Coran. His fingers were shaking too much to type properly, but Coran got the gist.

And without much more, they brought him home.

********

It wasn’t until after Keith was fast asleep, curled on his side on one of the cots in the medical bay, that Shiro finally cried.

Keith had refused a pod, and honestly, Lance couldn’t say that he blamed him. Even in his sleep, the tear tracks were stained through the grime on his skin and the bruises were—_stark, _against his pallor, more visible than they’d been in the shadows of the dungeon. He looked worse. More trampled, than he had in the dark. But he had one hand curled tightly around Shiro’s and had _begged—_

_“—please, no, no, please don’t make me, _please_—”_

—so they merely changed him into some soft sleep clothes, hooked him up to an IV, and let him rest. Coran’s preliminary scans showed nothing critical—no broken bones, no organ damage or internal bleeding—so it wasn’t _necessary _that he be put in a pod. It would’ve healed the bruises, would’ve closed the wounds and forced a restless mind to ease, but it was isolated and cold and _dark, _and after seeing the dungeon he’d been kept in, Lance didn’t really want Keith to be subjected to that, either.

Maybe once he felt a little more present_, _once he wasn’t in fight-or-flight mode and the golden tinge had faded from his eyes, he’d agree to go in. Those blisters must’ve felt like fire where they rubbed against his clothes, or the pillows, or the bandages, and would eventually need proper treatment. But for now, they were just content to have him _back._

And when Keith’s eyes finally fluttered shut and his iron-tight grip on Shiro’s human hand relaxed, Shiro let out a shuddering breath that Lance heard less in his ears and more in that tightness still constricting his heart.

He left one hand where it rested on Keith’s bent knee, and lifted the other to squeeze at Shiro’s shoulder. Shiro ducked his head low, bringing Keith’s hand close to his face and gripping it tightly. He was a quiet crier, breathing unevenly through his nose but with a set jaw as he hunched over Keith’s prone body. Covering him. Protecting him.

Except there was no protecting Keith from this kind of hurt, and they both knew it.

“It’s okay, buddy,” Lance murmured anyways, rubbing in small circular motions. Holding himself together for Shiro’s sake. “He’s home. We’ve got him. It’s okay.”

And it wasn’t, really, but it’s all he had left to give. So it had to be enough.


End file.
